


A Two-Sided Argument

by hotchoco195



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Childhood, Dark! Molly, F/M, Identity, Implied Sexual Content, Pre-Series 1, Random use of a canon character, disguises, molliarty - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 00:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchoco195/pseuds/hotchoco195
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Molly Hooper wasn't her real name? A brief fairy tale about little Jim</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Two-Sided Argument

 Once upon a time, as all good cautionary tales start, there was a girl called Mary Morstan whose father called her Molly and chucked her under the chin, and then he died.

 

After that the house was quiet. The kids at school didn’t get her anymore, and she went from being the shy girl on the edge of the group to poor Mary with the dead father to the awkward loner eating by herself at lunch.

 

When she was thirteen a new boy came, and he was quiet and awkward too. But Mary could tell he was like her: not weird, just different. Too strange for the other kids, too morbid or clever, too interested in the big picture. She thought maybe she should tell him that, but she’d become so used to being alone she said nothing.

 

“Hello.”

“Uh, hi.”

“I saw you watching me.”

“N-n-not watching. I just noticed you, is all. Thought you might want some company.”

“I’m Jim.”

“Mary.”

“Nice to meet you, Mary.”

 

He ate lunch in the library with her and invited her to the park on weekends, and it might not have been ‘normal’ teenage stuff they talked about but it was interesting. Mary liked his little jokes, especially about their classmates.

“Why should I try to converse with any of those morons?” he’d say.

“You shouldn’t.” Mary would agree. _You should just stay with me_.

The darkness in Jim didn’t scare her. She knew it was there, saw it as plain as if it was written on his forehead, but Mary only wanted more.

 

Carl Powers was one of those school bullies you just knew was already at his peak and could only become a sad, pathetic adult. He liked to call Mary 'The Creeper', but he made Jim’s daily degradation his personal mission. Then he went to a swim meet and died.

“Did you hear about Carl?” Mary asked, as if the whole school wasn’t obsessed with the news.

“Nothing important.” Jim smiled, and his eyes said more than whole reams of words.

Mary nodded. “I think it’s good.”

And Jim’s mouth twitched and he slid his hand into hers. “That’s my girl.”

 

 

She wanted to be badder. She wanted to show Jim her shadows, the ones she’d been carrying for so many years now, since she saw her father’s corpse on the shiny morgue table. Mary started smoking and stealing her mother’s whiskey; she cut her hair into a punk bob and wore nothing but black. Jim probably thought it was stupid and pedestrian, but he didn’t say anything for a whole year.

“You know, you don’t have to dress up for me. I can see you, Mary.”

 

They were drunk on her bed after final exams. Jim’s parents never seemed to miss him, and Mary’s mother was visiting a sister in Cornwall. The music was loud and the vodka was strong and Mary had never felt more alive and dead at the same time. School was _over_.

“Are you as happy as me right now?” Jim asked with a dopey grin.

He kissed her, and she knew she was the first, and she knew she was the only one deemed worthy.

They made love on her purple sheets and it was clumsy but not awkward. Mary looked up at the dark boy and knew this was where she belonged – where she’d always belonged.

“Come with me after graduation. I’m going to make my name legend. We’ll never be alone as long as we have each other, Mary.”

Her nerves sang and she choked on the sounds.

 

She couldn’t go with him – she wanted nothing more than to give herself over and live by his side, to be so close she was merely an extension of him. But she had her own needs, her own torments. She dyed her hair and changed her name and ran away to London to study, hiding in respectability. She became meek and invisible again, hoping she can stay hidden forever. But of course she didn’t really believe that.

 

He found her within a month. She figures he wasn’t trying very hard or it would have been half that. Maybe she made it so easy on purpose.

He slammed her against the dorm room wall, hips grinding against hers almost painfully good. “I offer you the world, Mary, and you run? Silly little thing, to forget who you belong to.”

She wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to tell him she was worse than him; that she couldn’t sit and wait and watch. But instead she rolled her head back against the wall as he fucked her, and the next day she changed her name again.

 

Maybe she did a better job the second time. Maybe he got the message. Maybe he just got distracted. But somehow she stayed quiet and safe for the rest of med school, and then for several years at the hospital. Every moment she expected he’d reappear until finally, with some disappointment, she started to think he wasn’t coming this time.

Molly Hooper was a fiction. She barely existed, so of course she was barely noticed – but that was the way she liked it. There was a new man in her life, one just as brilliant and possibly more fucked up. She knew Jim would love him, but Sherlock was nothing compared to her boy.

 

Molly, the girl who didn’t exist, walked into her apartment to find a criminal mastermind sitting on the couch with her cat in his lap.

“Hello Mary. I think I’ve waited long enough, don’t you?”

She didn’t even pack a bag, just held out her hand and he took it.

Jim purred as they slid into the back seat of his town car. “And kitten makes three.”


End file.
